Stephen Colbert Makes America Great

Trump’s election upended every American institution—including late-night comedy, where wacky just no longer cuts it. Stephen Colbert is proving that a late-night host’s new responsibility is to do what a president used to do: steady a reeling nation. (And then do the wacky.)

Before he started beating Fallon in the ratings and replaced Jon Stewart as the ombudsman of late night, Stephen Colbert spent a decade playing the very white, very American “Stephen Colbert”: the kind of man you might now see defending Donald Trump on Fox News…or defending Donald Trump during White House press briefings…or defending Donald Trump during an interrogation by Robert Mueller. But like Superman jumping into a phone booth and removing his navy suit to reveal—huh!—another navy suit, Colbert stepped up to save us. Not by parodying far-right hypocrisy—by confronting it. GQ talked to the Man of the Year about pretending to be the person you really are, why Trump is a bad talk-show guest, and if this too shall pass.

GQ: It felt like this year was terrible for everyone. But in the context of world history, how bad is it, really?

Stephen Colbert: America has made mistakes before this—I would say the Dred Scott decision's still worse than what we have going on right now.

So, Trump: better than Dred Scott.
That's a low bar to shuffle over. But yes, Trump is better than the Dred Scott decision. Trump's election is a stone thrown into the pond that just will never stop rippling. I think it's going to be generations before we recover from whatever it is he's doing.

But you think we will recover?
I hope that we will. I don't know how. I don't know how we recover from choosing that man to be the leader of this country. I don't know how we recover our ethical or moral standing in the world, because this is an abdication of an American moral philosophy. We've completely abandoned it.

Watching Obama be so gracious and Trump be so disgusting on Inauguration Day was just like, “How did we go from that to this?”
Seeing Donald Trump represent the United States is like hearing little children say filthy words. It shocks you and makes you wonder how this came about.

It feels like you're here at exactly the right time. Not that Trump was destined to be president and you were destined to take him on or something, but does it feel like you're in the position you're in for a reason?
I don't have any such grand picture of myself. But I'm grateful to have a purpose now. To know what I want to do every day, which is to keep my eye on what's happened for the last 24 hours and talk about it. The night Trump was elected, that live show was the hardest show I ever did. Just the reality of what we were experiencing in real time with the audience, and sharing with them…that was the hardest thing I ever did. But afterward I had my senior editorial staff come down, and I said, “Well, if you were wondering why you have this job, now you know.”

How has Trump's election changed your relationship with the audience?
Perhaps they sense how grateful I am to be onstage with them. I need this job. I get the same sort of release that I think the audience is looking for.

How do you keep perspective when you have to deal with things in those 24-hour chunks?
Oh, my wife and kids. I'm old for somebody who does one of these jobs—I got this gig at 51, and I did my other show at 41. Guys like Conan got it when they were 30 or something. But I already was married, with kids, and had a value system that was really centered around the love of your daily life. That's what calms me down. Like the moon this morning—the beautiful half-moon above the trees on a crisp morning, and above all of the clouds the stars forever shine. It gives you a sense that you're just one small thing. You're not changing anything; you're reacting to it. You might be changing people's days, but it also helps to keep you from taking yourself too seriously.

Despite being...you, you've stayed in suburban New Jersey. Did you ever consider moving?
I love it out in the suburbs. I like driving my Volvo to the dry cleaners to decide which of my khaki pants to pick out. I also like getting away from this world. Like, none of my friends out there are show-business people. My best friends out there are all Wall Street guys. They're all Republicans.

Do they like the show?
They come to the show. Their kids come to the show. It doesn't matter.

You don't have the burden of trying to be cool.
Oh, sure. I'm a white, straight, Christian—add to that Catholic, the Microsoft of Christianity—American male. In a way that makes no sense at all, that's kind of like “American neutral.” And up until now my whole career has been kind of questioning, “Why is that American neutral? Why is that a hegemonic position?” So by embracing it very strongly, what I have been doing my whole career is questioning my identity by playing it—by performing my identity.

It's white-guy drag.
I'm a white guy in white-guy drag. That's certainly what the “Stephen Colbert” character was—a heightened white guy really embracing the white-guyness. But it was not just an act; it was also a confession, which is “This is really what I am,” and then questioning, “What does that mean?” Now I don't feel like I have to be something else—I can just be that. And if it's uncool, it's uncool. But I know I don't have another gear.

So you're not questioning it anymore?
Oh, no, I do. I just don't do it subversively. I do it…“obversively”? It was subversive. Now it's overt.

What is your role as an interviewer?
It's no secret that some people have a story to tell, so then my job is to get out of their way and be a surrogate of the audience's enjoyment of the story. But with other people, my job is to make them feel at ease when they get out there and then to be publicly curious about them. People come with their own agendas. It's not my job to change their agendas.

And yet one of the best parts of your show is when the public curiosity becomes debate—you seem to really delight in someone who can knock you off balance. Letterman was the same way.
I love it. That's why I love having Bill Maher. People say, “Do you really like having him on?” because we've been contentious with each other. God, it's a joy! The more resistance the better.

Maher will engage with you even if you're like, “Why would you do that?” But even if you're honestly asking, Donald Trump feels like you're criticizing him and shuts down.
Trump is actually kind of a boring guest. My brother Ed was in the audience the night that Trump was on, in 2015. And after the show, he goes, “Okay, so he's not a dummy.” Because Trump wouldn't even look me in the eye, really. He put his hands in his lap like a little boy, and he was very, very safe. Obviously, there's an element of fear of making a mistake—what's he going to get out of the interview if he's too entertaining? I had the same experience when I interviewed Bill O'Reilly back in the day. It was like, “Wow, that was really boring”—Bill O'Reilly wouldn't be Bill O'Reilly on my show. That was the red meat he threw for his own fans.

O'Reilly and Trump are people who do a character that is as much a part of who they are publicly as The Colbert Report Colbert was.
One of the things that we learned at the old show is that somebody's gotta play straight—it was hard for me to do my character and to have somebody else doing character, because it was too slippery; there was no place to stand. And so one of the things I've had to learn on this show is I've got to be myself. I've gotta play straight to the guest's character to a large degree. Changing my interview style was a challenge for me.

It's interesting that you called yourself a questioner, because late-night television is a place where you can see exactly what drives people creatively. Like, Jimmy Fallon wants everyone to be comfortable and to have fun. And Jimmy Kimmel has a need to personalize, and Seth Meyers has to point out logical fallacies, and Sam Bee expresses righteous indignation, and John Oliver exposes. And I feel like you're a questioner. You're engaging with other people to try to find common ground.
That would be a good goal. And if that's what you perceive, I'm glad of that. Because yeah, I'm looking for community.

How so?
There's an aspect of wanting to love other people, you know? Years ago I was first talking about this with Spike Jonze, actually. He came up and we split a chocolate bar and he interviewed me about what I wanted The Late Show to be. And then he wrote it up and sent it back to me right after the show started: “Here's a reminder of what you were thinking six months ago about what you wanted the show to be.” One of the things I said to him was “How do you do a comedy show that includes love on any level?” Nobody wants to hear the word “love.” That's a four-letter word. That's a comedy-killer. Because while it's a happy idea, love is very serious. It's not the sort of thing you should say out loud. I'm even hesitant to say it out loud in this interview. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. Even the president! When he started, I said, “Give him a chance but not an inch.”

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